Rx 45 / The Sun: Tarot XIX
Jess (Jess Collins), The Sun: Tarot XIX, 1960. Courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art.
And where my youth was, now the Sun in you grows hot, your day
is young, my place you take triumphantly. All along
it’s been for you, for this lowering of your horns in challenge. She
had her will of me and will not
let my struggling spirit in itself be free.–Robert Duncan, excerpt from “Rites of Passage II” from Ground Work: Before the War.
In this collage by the California “beat generation” artist known simply as “Jess,” human anatomical diagrams are interposed with lithographs of ancient civilizations and Tarot card iconography in a fantastical intermingling of science and mysticism. With a postmodern irreverence, the collage resists dominant fine art sensibilities of the day such as Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, replacing hierarchy and a minimalist aesthetic with randomness and excess. Jess was known for “paste-ups” such as these that could take years to produce. He often utilized hundreds of images from found materials and ephemera — books, old magazines, puzzle pieces, steel engravings, newspapers — to produce collages that reference mythology, the occult, and the immaterial world.
Born Burgess Franklin Collins (1923–2004), Jess worked as a chemist during and after the Second World War monitoring the production of plutonium at the Manhattan Project. After a harrowing dream, he left his work in nuclear energy to pursue art at the University of California, Berkeley and the California School of Fine Arts. He became immersed in a radically different scene that largely eschewed formal structures and empiricism in favor of social networks bound together by creativity and mystic philosophy. Alongside his partner, the legendary American poet Robert Duncan (1919–1988), Jess went on to become a transformative figure in the West Coast counterculture. Theirs was a vitalizing and harmonious relationship that spanned nearly four decades and fostered a local community of writers and artists. Mutual interests in mythology and the supernatural imbued their respective practices with an aesthetic irreverence that set them wholly apart from the mainstream. As friend of the couple Christopher Wagstaff recalled, “Jess’s collages and drawings were often published to accompany Duncan’s writing, acting as springboards or counterpoints for specific poems and essays. Duncan’s poems and ideas in turn permeated the complex imagery of Jess’s sensitive works.”
Jess, Duncan, and their artistic circle produced art for their own enlightenment and enjoyment, not for the market and rarely for public display. Even the Victorian Mission District home Jess and Duncan shared was a collaborative and communal space, a testament to the intimate artistic world they created for themselves and close friends. The four-story house, an artistic “wonderland,” was filled with original fairytale editions, Gertrude Stein’s books, Greek mythology, and art by Helen Adams, Wallace Berman, George Herms, and more. The home, much like their relationship and the creativity communities it nurtured, anchored the mid-century cultural scene in the Bay Area.
Reflections…
Jess and Duncan’s vibrant artistic community may invoke nostalgia or yearning for collaborative, dynamic, working environments, which can often be fertile ground for innovation and exploration of all kinds. Although their social world formed organically, Jess and Duncan’s community begs the question: how can institutions foster or even incentivize informal exchange and community around shared interests and goals? What factors might prevent the organic formation of such communities in a contemporary academic or institutional medical context? Consider networks such as women in medicine, journal clubs, diversity, equity, and inclusion groups. What benefits do such communities engender, from participant well-being, belonging, and purpose, to research opportunities and mentorship?
Jess described his process of organizing the hundreds or even thousands of collage elements into fantastical tapestries. “For most of us,” he wrote, “certainly for me—the mythic imagination carries a level of reality that can be equal to or greater than logic and the scientific method. I try to bring together many story possibilities that will trigger more stories and more possibilities. . . . It's all about the romantic imagination and creating something that does not stop where my imagination leaves off.” Although perhaps antithetical to conventional understandings of science, might we think of Jess’s mythical pursuits in the arts as an extension of his earlier commitment to the sciences? In other words, he began by exploring what is knowable about the world and later extended this pursuits to capture what is unknowable. For physicians who may feel disillusioned or burnt-out, what creative or unconventional pursuits can bring new meaning to one’s work? How can we foster creativity and the arts as an antidote to disillusionment?
Sources
Jess Collins Trust. “Biography,” https://jesscollins.org/artist-biography/.
Grey Art Gallery, “An Opening of the Field: Jess, Robert Duncan, and Their Circle at the Grey Art Gallery on Washington Square January 14–March 29, 2014,” https://greyartgallery.nyu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Jess_Duncan_PressRelease_FINAL.pdf.
Cotter, H. “The Company They Kept,” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 Jan. 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/17/arts/design/robert-duncan-and-jess-and-their-wonderland-of-art.html.
